


Parallel Lines

by Afflitto



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: M/M, Prumano - Freeform, Soulmates, TGWTG Big House AU, some mentioned romerica
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 18:32:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4635825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Afflitto/pseuds/Afflitto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prumano Week 2015, day 4 --> Soulmate AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parallel Lines

Gilbert’s chest would warm when his soul-mate was near.

Or that’s what Ludwig said it was.

Of course Ludwig believed that shit—he’d found his soul-mate on a train to Berlin.  

“You say you’ve experienced it?” Ludwig asked.  He’d been folding the laundry in neat rows, the sleeves tucked and the creases crisp.  He worked intently, quietly, occasionally humming as he plucked a new shirt from the basket.

He’d been nothing but smiles and hummed songs since he’d met Feliciano.  

“Yeah, unless it’s some fucked up heartburn, I’m pretty sure I know what I’m talking about,” Gilbert grumbled.  He’d gotten distracted three shirts in—but they were folded just as expertly as Ludwig would have done.  Now, he flopped onto one of the couches in the small apartment, one foot hanging off the edge and the other up over the back.   Fingers traced absently at hideous shag carpet, right where some previous tenant had burned a big hole.

“Hm,” Ludwig said.  He finished the last of the shirts and patted it.  “Where was it that this happened?”

“In a bar,” Gilbert said, “At 3 am.  And another time in a coffee shop.  And another out at the bus stop.”

“And did you actually bother looking around?” Ludwig asked. 

Gilbert flung his arms behind him dramatically with a long groan.  “What do you think, Bruder.  There were just a few dead-eyed drunks in the bar, and the coffee shop was so full it was impossible to see anyone.”

“And the bus stop?”

“It was completely empty save for me,” Gilbert said.  He sighed more quietly this time, voice dying into something soft but hoarse.  “I don’t get it.”

“Someone must have been around,” Ludwig said.  

“Maybe my soul-mate is just a little bitty bird,” Gilbert said.  “Hopefully a yellow one.”

“Now you’re just being strange.”  Ludwig stood and stretched, then strode over to pull open the blinds.  Sunlight flooded in.  “Do you feel anything now?”

Gilbert shrugged.  “Not really.  So it’s not just…random, I don’t think.  I returned to those places, even, and nothing.”

“And you, erm, you’re sure it really isn’t heartburn?” Ludwig asked.  He coughed a little into his fist to dismiss the awkwardness of such a question.

Gilbert just dug the heels of his hands into his eyes.  “Pretty damn sure I know what heartburn feels like.  No, it’s that weird fluttery warmth shit everyone says it is.”  Rearranging his limbs, he sat up to huddle over, hands pulling through his hair, elbows on his knees.  “Like…oh shit.  Like it’s all going to be okay.  Like you get when it’s the best fucking day ever and you feel _whole._ ”

“Yeah,” Ludwig said quietly. 

“But then it’s shitty, because where the hell is he.  And as soon as the warmth spreads, it freezes over and I feel shittier than before, like I have this gaping hole in my chest.”  He scoffed down at the damaged carpet again.

Gilbert didn’t look up, even as Ludwig placed a hand on his shoulder.  “You’ll find him.  He’s out there.”  
–

Lovino did not understand the weird fluttering warmth he felt in his chest sometimes.  It usually happened at the bar he frequented with his previous boyfriend, Alfred, but sometimes at the bus stop, and most often at the coffee shop where he fought hordes for a quick shot of caffeine before work.  

His first instinct was to see the doctor.

The doctor dismissed it after checking his vitals and baselines and finding nothing wrong.

It wasn’t an altogether unpleasant feeling, Lovino finally relented.  He figured it was what Feliciano described being in love was like.

But he’d never felt it with Alfred, and there was no one else even on his radar.

“It’s whatever,” he scowled at Feliciano one day, as the pair waited by a pair of iron chairs, neither committing to the crowd pulling through the streets or the table at the café.  Others dined around them, in tables and chairs spilling off the sidewalk into the curb.

“I think it’s probably nothing harmful,” Feliciano said, blinking.  “If the doctor says it’s okay, then…”

“Who said the doctor knows shit,” Lovino huffed.  He wrenched the chair out and sat.

Feliciano took the chair opposite.  It grated on the sidewalk as he pulled it outward.  “Hmm.”  

Feliciano busied himself with a menu, but set it down again to watch his brother, who was staring into the crowd, turned around in his chair with both hands on the back.  He was gripping so hard that his knuckles were white.  

“Is…is something wrong, brother?” Feliciano asked.

“No,” Lovino said, too quickly.  He turned back, but his eyes darted past Feliciano; he was scanning the crowd.  

“It’s happening again, isn’t it,” Feliciano said.  “The chest thing.”

Lovino sighed but nodded.  His fingers pulled at the fabric over his heart.  “Yeah…”  His brow furrowed.  

“What…does it feel like?” Feliciano asked.  He, too, kept his eyes open, as if he could decipher some cause from the endless stampede of people.

“Like my heart might explode,” Lovino said.

Feliciano shoved himself upward.  “Should I take you to the doctor—“

“Sit the fuck back down,” Lovino said.  He waited til his brother lowered himself into his chair, then sighed with his face in his hands.  “Fuck.   _Fuck._  No, it’s not painful.  Just…just like my heart is so full and—and I’m gonna be—I’m gonna be happy if _something_ happens, but that something never does happen.”  His fingers clawed more painfully in his hair andhe grimaced.  “It’s not fucking fair.  Why does this shit have to taunt me?”

“We’ll figure it out,” Feliciano said quietly.  He could only watch helplessly.

Lovino made it through a glass of water before the heat in his chest started to pulse a counter beat to his own heart.  He gripped the fabric harder and stood.  “I—I have to go. Just—just don’t—“  He stumbled through some sort of explanation, mind racing faster than the pounding in his chest, and shoved through the crowd before hearing a response.

If the swarm of people was hard to navigate before, wading through now was like quicksand.  Lovino felt his lungs constrict.  Dizziness peppered his vision—but the faster he struggled and pushed and fought, the stronger the warmth got—like some life-sized game of hot and cold.

Eventually he staggered out into an open marketplace and stood dazed, the warmth a blazing heat and sweat plastering his bangs to his face.   Taking a few deep breaths, he looked around.  Nothing was out of the usual.  

“Fuck,” he said as he pinched the bridge of his nose.  The sun beat down.  He took another breath.  The warmth did not lessen.

Above him, balconies jutted out of old brick buildings.  Drapes fluttered in open windows.  Plants twisted around iron gates.  

Lovino found himself taking a step toward the alley.  He paused.  The heat intensified until he thought his heart might burst.

He took another.  And another.  

He found an apartment toward the end, back where a gate barred the alley from the main street.  The whir of cars and the chatter of people was muffled.  He reached for the knob and tried it.  

Locked.

Pressing an ear to the door produced no results either, but Lovino felt along the frame then, with practiced ease, picked the lock.  It swung open into the foyer of a little apartment.

Lovino waited, breath caught in his throat, as he listened for signs of life.  
Nothing.  

He took a step in.  Dust tickled his nose; he fought the urge to sneeze, and pressed his hand that much tighter to his chest. 

“Whatever I’m looking for…must be here,” he breathed.  He continued walking down a dark hallway, to where it opened up into a little room toward the back, lit bright by a large window—

–but otherwise empty.

“H-hello—?” Lovino called.

He took another step, walking as if the breath had been knocked out of him.  His heart twisted and burned.  He choked over something—some half realized mix between a sob and a shriek.

“Of fucking course the fuckhole is fucking empty—“ he managed.  His voice echoed into the emptiness that rebounded into him, but his heart continued to pulse until hot tears spilled over and he sank to the floor and sobbed, fingers clawing through his hair.

“Of course…of fucking course…” One hand slid from his head to snag the carpet, right over a charred patch that had been burned right through.

–

Gilbert glanced up, past his brother, toward the doorway leading out into the foyer.  “Huh,” he said, hand drifting up to his heart.  

“What is it?” Ludwig asked, as he returned to the pile of clothes.

“I can feel the warmth again,” Gilbert said.  “But there’s no one here but you and me.”

**Author's Note:**

> "Parallel Lines have a lot in common, but they never meet."


End file.
